It has been little more than a week since U.S. Justice Department officials announced with great solemnity that they are indeed reasonable people when it comes to dragging journalists into national security leak investigations.

Using a tool such as a subpoena against a reporter would be “an extraordinary measure.” There would be a proper balance between press freedoms and investigations.

It all sounded reassuring.

And with one court decision last week, we will see whether it is a sincere effort, or just lip service designed to calm the outrage that erupted after revelations the government had secretly seized reporters’ phone records and e-mails.

In a decision that could chill national security reporting, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that New York Times reporter James Risen must testify in a criminal trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency official accused of giving him classified information.

Risen wrote a book published in 2006 called “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.” In it, he describes a botched CIA effort to fool Iranian scientists by giving them faulty blueprints for nuclear triggering devices.

A grand jury began investigating the disclosures and in 2010 former CIA official Jeffrey Sterling was indicted and accused of providing information to Risen.

When prosecutors sought to have Risen testify, a federal court judge ruled they had not shown his testimony was critical to proving the case.

“A criminal trial subpoena is not a free pass for the government to rifle through a reporter’s notebook,” U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema wrote in 2011.

She said prosecutors were trying to make the trial more simple and efficient by calling Risen, and noted they had alternative means by which to prove their case.

Prosecutors appealed, and unfortunately, the appeals court didn’t see it that way. While their ruling applies only to the Fourth Circuit, it’s important geography insofar as national security reporting goes.

The Fourth Circuit encompasses Maryland and Virginia, where the nation’s major national security agencies — including the CIA and the Pentagon — are located.

And that is why we all should care about this ruling and its implications.

If prosecutors can go after reporters in these sorts of cases, how will we ever know what our government is really doing in the name of national security?

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dana Priest gave testimony in this case, saying that without confidential sources “it would have been impossible” to report even on the basic contours of the government’s counterrorism decision and operations. That’s because the government has made nearly every aspect of the programs secret.

Examples abound to support the importance of reporters being able to offer confidentiality to sources.

Consider the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of this nation’s involvement in Vietnam. It was provided to the press by a confidential source.

Abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was revealed when reporters relied on a classified report not meant for public release.

These stories and countless others have resulted in important policy discussions and changes. It seems, however, the Obama administration takes a hard line on leakers, prosecuting six of them, more than under all prior administrations combined.

So where does this leave us?

Assuredly, there will be appeals of the recent Fourth Circuit ruling and there should be.

Risen has pledged to go to prison rather than testify, which would be an inauspicious start to the detente the Justice Department says it wants to forge with journalists after secret government snooping into Associated Press and Fox News phone records was revealed this spring.

There is, however, a simple and powerful thing the Justice Department could do in this case:

Don’t seek to enforce the subpoena against Risen. Drop it and pursue other means to prove the case. With that, this administration would show in no uncertain terms that it’s walking the talk in respecting press freedoms and the role they play in ensuring a healthy democracy.

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